Before 1913 there was no Federal Reserve, there were therefore no Federal Reserve Notes, and there was no Federal Income Tax (that must only be paid only in FRN's). The entire system has lasted only a century. Will it last another century? And if it does, will the FRN Dollars buy in 100 years what they will buy today? Will gold and silver in 100 years buy what they will today?

Isayre, legal tender is just that legal. If we had never gotten off the gold & silver exchange the Cayman Islands would have sunk long ago & all that gold & silver would have been long gone & sitting overseas which is what was happening. How many ounces of gold would a barrel of oil demand?Before the Fed there were tariffs & fees which fell mostly on imports & exports & production, we made & grew our own but I guess all those poor working folks wanted to change that to make more profits.

samhill wrote:Isayre, legal tender is just that legal. If we had never gotten off the gold & silver exchange the Cayman Islands would have sunk long ago & all that gold & silver would have been long gone & sitting overseas which is what was happening. How many ounces of gold would a barrel of oil demand?Before the Fed there were tariffs & fees which fell mostly on imports & exports & production, we made & grew our own but I guess all those poor working folks wanted to change that to make more profits.

Sam, are you suggesting that a bunch of honest common folk contrived the Federal Reserve and its fractional reserve banking scheme and the requisite Federal Income Tax that makes it work (by being the enforcement leg of the system), or was such a system contrived by far more nefarious and calculated and educated and wealthy sorts (the very sorts that you seem to generally rail against)?

I'll let that up to you Larry but isn't it the poor folks that are ruining the country? That seems to be the calling card of some aid to the poor is bad but aid to the wealthy is good & if those lazy folks would take the jobs that the job creators need filled everything would be good again.

For one reason or another the poor will always be with us and so will robber barons. Sam, much of what you write is true but too often the cure makes things worse. Regulation to further a free and fair market is good, but not to legalize stealing, which is what has been happening.

franco b wrote:For one reason or another the poor will always be with us and so will robber barons. Sam, much of what you write is true but too often the cure makes things worse. Regulation to further a free and fair market is good, but not to legalize stealing, which is what has been happening.

Quite true! The debasement of the currency over time (erosion of its buying power through intentional over supply, as witnessed by the Federal Reserves targeting of 2% inflation, if by nothing else they are doing [like endless QE and bail outs]) is a form of wealth transfer to the banking system (I.E., the wealthy and Wall Street types) that robs us blind over time (and particularly more so for the poor to middle class who do not have a clue as to what is happening).

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

The current system of ever declining savings value essentially forces everyone to gamble with their savings in the hopes of retaining your wealths current buying power on into the future. The most typical gambling joint of choice for this endeavor is the stock market. Even 401K's play the game. All to the benefit of the very Wall Street Boyz and Banksters who rigged the game to their benefit with the introduction of the Federal Reserve System, and are quite glad that you are playing right along with their game.

It's either that, or you can spend your paper money as soon as you get it in order to maximize its value. Saving it for later (without being a lucky gambler) means only that it will buy less and less as time marches forward. Savings thus become your enemy, as well as the enemy of the state and the Wall Street Boyz (witness how G W Bush told all of us to go out and spend, spend, spend like nothing ever happened soon after 9/11).

Either way, gamble it on stocks and bonds, or spend it right away, and they have you right where they want you.

Last edited by lsayre on Sat Apr 12, 2014 2:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

samhill wrote:Just wondering here but are there any countries that still use currency that is actually backed by more than a promise & hope?

Not at the present time.

Bu the very concept of backing (such as with a gold or silver or a bi-metal standard) is merely a precursor to the current system anyway. It permits fractional reserve banking and thus currency fabrication from thin air. Notice that the Constitution authorized that only gold and silver (the real things) can be money. It did not authorize paper that is exchangeable into gold or silver. That was merely phase one of the current monetary corruption.

Article 1, Section 10 states that no State shall emit "Bills Of Credit" (paper notes passing as currency). It further declares that no State shall make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts. It did not ever say that banks can't emit their very own "bills of credit", and as a consequence at one time all banks issued their very own currency notes (so they could practice fractional reserve banking). No one was legally obligated (I.E., forced) to deal with or accept their debt based notes as having any real value however, and that was the only time when faith and trust ever really entered into it. Only with government issued paper did the force of legal tender laws appear, supplanting faith and trust with legal enforcement and the fear thereof.

Other than during Continental times pre the USA did paper currency pass among the States as tender for debts. That was a disaster. The next appearance of government issued paper came during the Civil War, when Abe Lincoln (who was bent on trashing the Constitution to nearly the extent that todays politicians do so) issued Greenbacks. They were the very first paper Dollars. Until then all money was either gold or silver coins.

As I said long ago when this same thing was discussed in another thread, if there were a gold standard everyone would have to have an electron microscope to be able to see their million dollars worth of gold. There has to be something man made as a medium which is often counterfeited as is one could only guess on how much lead or ah gold would be floating around. As I also mentioned what would happen with all the debts owed & imports that have to be paid for if suddenly it had to be paid in gold? Soon our gold would be depleted & we would need some other form of currency, all the gold would be in the hands of even fewer than all the money now. What's the difference between the two if they soon become so scarce that only a few hold all & you can't print more gold.

It's all a mater of valuation, but there would be plenty of gold and silver around to handle the task. Particularly if the gold that was confiscated from everyone back in 1934 was given back to them, and ditto the silver that was robbed from us in 1964. The value of gold and silver were established by the Coinage Act of 1792. That should work just fine. It would purchase now what it purchased then, and people would perhaps go back to living on perhaps three to five Dollars a day, but houses would be $3,000, cars would be $600, bread would be a nickel a loaf, anthracite would be $4 per ton, etc.... It's all relative.

And banks would be free to circulate bank notes, as they would once again be free to print them. Even you could print your own notes. It's all a mater of trust, and if you are trustworthy, then your notes will have value. Bitcoins or whatever would be accepted (or not accepted) as money. You would be free to choose and so would everyone else.

Wouldn't you rather be free to choose, and also let everyone else be free to choose, and have money itself be freed from gaining value only the point of a governments gun?

I have never had a governments gun pointed at me (at least not mine) how would that that you propose affect other countries since we obviously don't produce hardly anything any longer? That & the fact that the same thing would happen with a few controlling most & the majority having very little if any, as you say everything is relative. A $600 dollar car is totally out of reach to someone that only has $2.

If you made $4 per day in gold and/or silver (which is $1,044 per year) and you could buy a car for $600 (on average), then it would be essentially the exact same as earning about $55,680 a year (which is probably above the national average right now) and paying $32,000 for a car (on average, with this being the actual current national average price for a new vehicle).

Try paying your taxes in anything other than FRN Dollars, and see if you don't experience the power of the governments gun. Or try paying your employees in gold or silver and see how soon you face the gun and wind up behind bars.

But then what's your point if everything is relative? You still haven't mentioned how we would trade with the rest of the world & why they or even Americans wouldn't hoard that gold & hold it off shore. As I said we soon wouldn't have any.

samhill wrote:But then what's your point if everything is relative? You still haven't mentioned how we would trade with the rest of the world & why they or even Americans wouldn't hoard that gold & hold it off shore. As I said we soon wouldn't have any.

But everything is not relative. Paper loses value over time (massively) and gold and silver retain value over time. One is corrupt and forced upon us, and the other is free and honest.

The Muslim nations want us to buy their oil with gold already (and always have). No one wants US paper Dollars right now. China would be glad to trade with us in gold and silver. I can see it happening, first with China going onto the gold standard, then with China assuming the renowned status of having the worlds reserve currency, and finally with the USA eventually capitulating and returning kicking and screaming to silver and gold as money after a whopping hard collapse of the economy due to the failure of the petrodollar and the loss of reserve currency status. Sam, you actually nailed it when you said we manufacture little that the world values. That includes US Dollars. Why should the USA have the worlds reserve currency? Also, you never told us which safe you would be after.